Slavery underpinned the confusion over ethnic, religious, and political terminology. To be “Bambara” in West Africa meant that a person could be enslaved as far as Muslims were concerned. The Muslims who held such views included the merchants of the Muslim commercial diaspora, the intellectual elite, and those who championed jihād. This ethnic labeling that was associated with slavery can be traced back to Aḥmad Bābā in the early seventeenth century and his predecessors before then. Aḥmad Bābās scholarship, which was influential in the jihād movement, was the culmination of a tradition that emphasized jurisprudence and syntax and was associated with the Baghayogho, a Soninke clan that spread throughout the Malinke regions of Mali and then the Songhay Empire and was also referred to as Wangara.55 The term “Bambara” usually referred to those identified as Bamana who lived between the upper Niger River and the Senegal River and who became subjects of Segu and Kaarta and their non-Muslim governments in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Linguistically and culturally, other than allegiance to Islam, they shared many features in economy and society with Mandinka and Soninke, whose affiliation with Islam was assumed on the basis of ethnicity.
Other distinctions of ethnicity were similarly ephemeral. Wolof and Fulbe in the Senegal valley shared allegiance to Islam and spoke mutually intelligible languages but were distinguished on the basis of economy. Wolof identified with the sedentary states of the Senegal region, including Waalo, while the nomadic population identified as Fulbe. The jihād movement changed this pattern; the states of Fuuta Bundu and Fuuta Toro emerged as states dominated by the Fulbe, as the designation “Fuuta” indicated. Various dichotomies characterized the cultural and political complexion of West Africa, including nomad versus sedentary and enslavable non-Muslims versus Muslims who under Islamic law were legally protected from enslavement. Language was often a signifier of identity, but most people spoke more than one language if they lived in contexts where such fluency was required, and Muslims by definition had to understand some Arabic, if only the daily prayers and the rudiments of education. Islam, and especially the consolidation of the Qādiriyya brotherhood, tended to transcend these dichotomies and to provide an alternate approach to identification. The Muslim commercial diaspora and the migrations of Fulbe and desert nomads propagated such affiliation within West Africa, that is, the region referred to in Muslim circles as Bilād al-Sūdān, “the land of the Blacks.”
The situation in Borno and the Hausa states during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was similar. There, too, Fulbe cattle nomads, their clan leaders, and the many agricultural estates that they established were found throughout the region, and as elsewhere in West Africa, the friction between the Fulbe, who were known in Hausa as Fulani, and the established governments of the Hausa states and Borno was pronounced. The main Hausa states that had been tributary to Songhay before 1591 subsequently fell under the sway of Borno, but a prolonged and serious drought in the middle of the eighteenth century disturbed this political context. The Tuareg nomads (especially Kel Ewey, Itisen, and Kel Gress) asserted their autonomy even while maintaining crucial economic links with the Hausa states because of the market for desert salt, textiles, grain, and other commodities. It was among the Tuareg that the first rumblings of jihād were to be heard, although in the end the Fulbe led the way. The Tuareg cleric Jibrīl ibn ʿUmar initially called for jihād in the late eighteenth century as a remedy for the injustices that he identified.
Inevitably the eighteenth-century wars among the Hausa states resulted in extensive enslavement (and reenslavement), and many captives were Muslims, some of whom ended up in the Atlantic world despite the efforts of some Muslims to prevent this fate, at least for freeborn Muslims. According to a Borno praise song dating to the late eighteenth century, “You can put chains around the necks of the slaves from other men’s towns and bring them to your own town,”56 but that did not warrant their sale to non-Muslims. The problem was that many Muslims were slaves, and in those turbulent times ʿUthmān dan Fodio, the leader of the Sokoto jihād after 1804, and other Muslim leaders were concerned with the protection of the Muslim community and the welfare of the enslaved who were Muslims. Indeed, in these wars it was difficult to establish who was being reenslaved and who should have been protected because of their previous status as free and therefore, if captured in war or in raids, should have been ransomed and restored to their freeborn status. By 1800 there were many complaints about the enslavement of Muslims. Jibrīl ibn ʿUmar, whose influence on ʿUthmān dan Fodio was considerable, wrote that “the selling of free men,” by whom he meant Muslims, was forbidden, and he wrote this because he was aware that Muslims were being sold. For Jibrīl, this prohibition and similar ones on adultery, alcohol consumption, and manslaughter were the ways in which “our people are distinguished.” Failure to enforce such prohibitions was reason for deep concern, if not open rebellion against established governments that were unable or unwilling to enforce such strictures.57 Similarly, Muhammad Tukur, a Fulani scholar who was a contemporary of ʿUthmān dan Fodio, composed a song that castigated those “who reduce free people to slavery without a legitimate reason.” Tukur charged that such actions were in discord with those of the Prophet, and indeed he classified such villains as “Unbelievers.”58
Certainly non-Muslims were being enslaved, which was not a problem for Muslims if their status was clearly established. Ukawsaw Gronniosaw (ca. 1710–72), who came from Borno and hence from an area of strong Muslim influence, was enslaved sometime in the 1720s. Gronniosaw was apparently not a Muslim or at least not someone whose status as a Muslim could have protected him from enslavement.59 He claimed that he was from Zara, which might be identified with Azare, a town located between Borno and Kano, or even possibly the Hausa city of Zaria, although the latter seems less likely because the details he provides do not suggest that he was Hausa. His references to religion show that he came from an area in which people decidedly mixed their Islam with local non-Muslim practices if they adhered to Islam at all.60 Gronniosaw reflected an impurity in belief that was subsequently used as justification for jihād. As Muhammad Bello, the son and successor of ʿUthmān dan Fodio, claimed, many people worshipped spirits that were thought to inhabit trees and rocky outcrops where shrines were located. Many Muslims condemned such practices and even advocated repression and persecution of those who practiced rituals associated with these shrines. Unfortunately, what Gronniosaw recorded is not always clear. Among his claims, he bragged that he was wearing gold on his body when he traveled along the well-established trade route from Borno through the Hausa cities and Borgu to the middle Volta River basin and to Asante.61 In fact, this was impossible, since gold came from Asante; it was not taken there. More likely, the reference to gold exaggerated his status and thereby made his fall from grace and sale into transatlantic slavery more tragic when in fact he probably was taken to Asante by kola merchants as a young slave for sale. Nonetheless, the sale of slaves to the coast was a complaint of the jihād leadership, even if Gronniosaw was not actually a Muslim. According to the interpretations of the jihād leadership, it was the responsibility of the master and the merchant